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A convention of metamorphosis in Greek art*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Malcolm Davies
Malcolm Davies*
Affiliation:
St. John's College, Oxford
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Extract

As part of his recent study of ‘Narration and allusion in Archaic Greek Art’, Professor A. M. Snodgrass has cause to treat of the famous Attic black-figure vase which depicts Circe handing a cup containing her sinister brew to one of Odysseus’ sailors. She is stirring it with her wand the while, and yet this sailor, and three companions besides, have already been transformed into various animals (or at least his head, and their heads and arms have been). Professor Snodgrass has no difficulty in explaining the apparent simultaneity of separate events here and elsewhere on this vase-painting as relating to what he calls the ‘synoptic’ technique of early Greek Art, that familiar device whereby several successive episodes in a narrative are presented together within the same picture. And he is inclined towards a similar line of explanation as regards the partial transformation of Odysseus’ ἑταῖροι: the artist ‘wished to express the passage of time by indicating a half-way stage in the transformation’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 106 , November 1986 , pp. 182 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1986

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References

1 The eleventh J. L. Myres Memorial Lecture (delivered at New College, Oxford, on 29th May 1981; published 1982).

2 The name-piece of the Painter of the Boston Polyphemus and datable c. 560 BC (Boston 99.518: ABV 198): Chr. Zindel, Die Irrfahrten des Odysseus (Basel 1984) No. 8 (with bibliography). Reproduced here as plate VIIIa with the kind permission of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

3 Snodgrass (n. 1) 7. Literary representations of metamorphosis sometimes choose (usually for comic effect) to depict an incomplete stage of the process: see e.g. Hollis, A. S., Ovid Metamorphoses Book VIII (Oxford 1970) xvi Google Scholar f. Snodgrass 5 rightly says that the Boston vase is ‘always chosen to express the quintessence’ of the ‘synoptic’ technique. Since he wrote it has so been treated again by, for instance, Raeck, W., ‘Zur Erzählweise archaischer und klassischer Mythenbilder’ JDAI ic (1984) 4 fGoogle Scholar.

4 This will, of course, be true of the numerous other depictions of the story in ancient art, which almost invariably show Odysseus' comrades with only their heads metamorphosed into various animals: see Brommer, F., Odysseus (Darmstadt 1983) 70 Google Scholar ff., esp. the summary on 79, Raeck (n. 3) 16 ff. The latter (like Snodgrass, whom he does not mention on the Boston vase) interprets the device as an ‘Übergangsform’.

5 Cf. Touchefeu-Meynier, O., Thèmes Odysséens dans l'art antique (Paris 1968) 124 Google Scholar.

6 Athens Acropolis 293: ARV 2 369.5; cf. Brommer (n. 4) 72.

7 The potentiality for confusion emerges still more clearly from such a specimen of more recent art as a seventeenth century tapestry woven from a design by Jacob Jordaens, where it is uncertain whether we are being shown some men as totally transformed into swine and others as yet unchanged, or whether the pigs are perfectly normal animals whose company the as yet unmetamorphosed companions will soon join. (Tapestry designed c. 1630-35 AD, woven by E.R.C. and other unidentified weaver at Brussels, now in Mexico [private collection]. Illustrated in d'Hulst, R.-A., Jacob Jordeans [Sotheby Publications 1982] plate 104 [143])Google Scholar.

8 According to Snodgrass (n. 1) 7 our vase ‘shows familiarity with the Odyssey, yet paradoxically at the same time declares its independence of literary influence’. I am less sure about the second half of this statement.

9 Berlin, Staatliche Museum 2279: ARV 115.2 (illustrated in Boardman, J., Athenian red figure vases: the archaic period [London 1975]Google Scholar fig. 214.1). Krieger, X., Der Kampf zwischen Peleus und Thetis in der gr. Vasenmalerei (eine typologische Untersuchung) (Diss. Erlangen 1973)Google Scholar deals with other vase-paintings of the subject that employ this convention. A similar device is often used to depict Nereus' resort to metamorphosis in his struggle with Heracles: cf. the column-krater by Sophilos (Athens NM 12587: ABV 40.24) or the hydria from the Leagros group (Paris Cab. Méd. 255: ABV 361.18); see, in general, Glynn, R., AJA lxxxv (1981) 124 Google Scholar f. and n. 34 (who illustrates the first of the vases just mentioned as fig. 2).

10 Boston 00.346: ARV 2 1045.7 = LIMC 1.1 F2 81 (462), described by Caskey, L. D. and Beazley, J. D. in Attic vase painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ii (Boston 1954) 83 Google Scholar. The unsatisfactory nature of depictions which show a fully transformed Actaeon emerges from such examples as Rubens' oil sketch (Brussels: Collection J. Nieuwenhuys: Alpers, S., The decoration of the Torre de la Parada (Corpus Rubensianum L. Burchard IX [1971])Google Scholar fig. 12; and even more clearly from G. B. Tiepolo's painting (formerly Maurice de Rothschild Collection New York, now in Bührle Collection Zurich: fig. 246, 36 in A. Morassi's Catalogue Raisonée [London 1962]) where the distress of Diana and her nymphs in the foreground, while a seemingly normal stag is harassed by hounds in the background, merely perplexes.

11 Guimond, L., ‘Aspects de la Survie du Mythe d'Actéon’ in Mélanges d'études anciennes offerts a Maurice Lebel (Quebec 1980) 411 Google Scholar ff. Ancient depictions are surveyed in LIMC 1.1 454 ff.

12 Yale University Art Gallery, in v. 1952.37.1 and 1871.48: illustrated in Guimond (n. 8) figs 1 and 2.

13 National Gallery 6420: Wethey, H. E., Titian ii (London 1975)Google Scholar no. 8 pls. 151–3. Robertson, Martin, “Beazley and After” (Münchner Jhh.d. hildenden Kunst 27 [1976] 30)Google Scholar has suggested that Titian was perhaps directly influenced by Greek vase-paintings of the death of Actaeon.

14 Brookgreen Gardens, in v. 5.36.12 illustrated in Guimond (n. 11) fig. 3.

15 A similar device in the painting of Actaeon by the young Delacroix ( Johnsen, Lee, The paintings of Eugène Delacroix: a critical catalogue 1816–31 [Oxford 1981]Google Scholar Vol. i [Text] Catalogue No. 60 [37]; Vol. ii [Plates] pl. 52).

16 Snodgrass (n. 1) 16.

17 Snodgrass (n. 1) 16 f.: 'stationary male figures have lightly-bent knees and striding legs to indicate their potential mobility: horses stand with their rear hooves on tip-toe for the same reason; hunters and Centaurs wear helmets to indicate their prowess as fighters’.

18 Why this (and other vase depictions of Circe's ministrations) includes a dog is not clear and Professor Snodgrass does not attempt an answer. One might hazard that this genuine animal was intended as a foil for the fully human Circe and the metamorphosed ἑταῖροι. Interestingly enough, the tapestry based on a design by Jacob Jordaens mentioned above (n. 7) also shows a dog (this time a rather intimidating mastiff) perhaps similarly to bridge the gap between full humans and transmogrified. Many depictions of the story in antiquity do not confine the animal heads to pigs: as we have seen, the black-figure vase gives its ἑταῖροι the heads of lion, horse and ram; this has been connected with the Odyssey's statement that former men now in the shape of wolves and lions stood on hind legs and fawned on Odysseus' companions (Od. x 210 ff., cf. 433). Apollod. epit. 7.15 in an account of Odysseus' adventures largely based on Homer has Circe change the companions into wolves, pigs, asses and lions and Brommer (n. 2) 72 deduces the antiquity of this variant version from the vase-paintings. But it is impossible to match the exuberant variety of every vase painting of this scene with a literary text (consider for instance the Berlin lekythos [F 1960] illustrated on p. 71 of Brommer's book which includes a swan-headed individual) and I prefer to suppose we have at work the visual artists' desire to avoid monotony, and with Apollodorus a misremembrance of Homer (cf. Dio Chrys. viii 21 [i 126 de Budé]). For an ingenious explanation as to why the Odyssey prefers pigs as the animals into which the men are changed see Reinhardt, K., Die Abenteuer der Odyssee in Tradition und Geist (Göttingen 1960) 79 Google Scholar.